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Museum Visitors Learn about Life Science with Ideum Exhibits

Ideum has created a variety of fun and educational interactives with a wide range of science museums.
Mar
28
2022
Authored by
Natalie Pace
Content Development Coordinator

Whether you are interested in learning more about climate change, exploring the human brain, or interacting with dinosaurs, Ideum has created an interactive exhibit on that topic. We have worked with science and design staff from institutions such as the California Science Center, the Phillip and Patricia Frost Museum of Science, the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History, and many more. These experiences range from individual exhibits to large-scale immersive exhibitions.

Most recently, Life! Beginnings opened at the California Science Center in 2021. Ideum collaborated with center staff to create a range of exhibits exploring the science of reproduction and genetics across the animal kingdom. The exhibition includes experiences inviting visitors to learn (and imitate!) the mating dances of different animal species, play with genetics to create unique pigeon strains, watch the various ways living beings birth new generations, and more.

Another exhibit that gives visitors the opportunity to explore the fundamental processes of life is Deep Dive Into the Brain. This deeply immersive interactive experience opened as part of the Journey Through the Human Brain exhibition at the Cox Science Center and Aquarium (formerly the South Florida Center and Aquarium). Ideum created a massive projection wall and custom control kiosk visitors can use to dive from the brain’s lobes and fissures into its inner structures and systems and down to the microscopic level of neurons and synapses.

Journey Through the Human Brain also features another Ideum interactive, the Brain Development Wall. This exhibit invites users to learn more about the brain and how it develops throughout the lifespan. Visitors select and view images and videos about developmental processes on a 14-foot video wall composed of 55” displays from our longtime partner LG to create an innovative learning experience.

Moving further back in time, the Ideum development team has created numerous exhibits about life in the ancient past. In 2020, Digital Dinos opened at the Las Vegas Natural History Museum. This exhibit incorporates the latest science about the appearance of real dinosaurs and gives visitors a unique opportunity to playfully interact with creatures that once roamed the region visitors are currently standing on. They can play with a Eotryrannus, pet an Ankylosaurus, and even feed an Eolambia mother and baby. The interaction is completely touchless, using a Microsoft Azure Kinect to track visitor movements and a 16-foot projection wall on which the dinos appear.

At the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History, visitors interact with considerably scarier dinosaurs from the Mesozoic era at DinoStomp. Numerous guests can gather in front of a 20-foot video wall composed of fifteen LG 55” displays, controllers, and Microsoft Kinect motion-recognition cameras. To everyone’s delight, visitor movements are recognized and trigger dinosaurs to react with bone-shaking roars.

DinoLand offers a different dinosaur-themed experience at Fort Worth. Visitors enter an immersive projection space featuring a prehistoric scene with a variety of dinosaurs roaming through the foliage. Visitors are invited to color and personalize their own dinosaur drawings, then scan them using HP Sprout stations. Their creations are then brought to life on the projection wall, placing the visitors' unique dinos directly into the exhibit.

Ideum also worked with The Phillip and Patricia Frost Museum of Science (formerly the Miami Museum of Science) to develop an exhibit that examined the Earth’s changing climate. Together, we created Climate Change Miami, a multi-user experience that combines primary scientific data, photographs, and videos to provide information about climate change. The exhibit includes a controllable Magic Planet spherical display, large display monitors, and interactive kiosks. Ideum developed the exhibit’s custom software and designed the user interface.

These projects all provided unique opportunities to create compelling learning experiences, and we are currently working on new initiatives that will continue to expand the realm of what’s possible in interactive science exhibits. We’ll keep you posted!

Header image courtesy of the California Science Center.